The Northward Contrail

My ride's here

Off today on my trip.  I'll have the computer with me, and will try to post as I can, provided time and Interweb access cooperate with me. 

I spent yesterday afternoon getting things ready.  Got the car washed and waxed and vacuumed and the windows Rain-X-ed and so forth, and I don't believe my car's been this clean in ages.  Almost a shame to have to take it out and drive the thing.  Oh, and while I'm talking about it, I have to put in a completely gratuitous plug for something called "Wax As U Dry," made by Eagle One.  It's a spray-on car wax that's applied as you towel-dry the car, and the motion of the towel rubs the wax into the finish.  The last few times I've waxed the car, it's been with paste wax, which, though effective, has been a nightmare that's worn my arms out and and left little white pieces of dried wax all over creation.   But with this spray-on wax, I had the car dried and waxed in half an hour.   It's one of those "man, I wish I'd thought of that first" ideas.

Anyhow, wish me luck on the trip.  I'll post as events will let me.

(Update, 6:35 p.m.:  Got in safely, and am unwinding from the long, long road trip.  Watching an episode of Law & Order while I'm waiting for a call from a friend who's going to dinner with me.  It's one of the Claire Kincaid episodes, which is especially blissful; she was by far my favorite of Ben Stone's/Jack McCoy's assistants.  [Though I must admit minor crush on Linus Roache in the new episodes.]  Anyhow, more to follow in a couple days...and I believe you'll find the reason I'm here to be of interest.  Yes, I'm being mysterious and I'm enjoying it....)

:: Where have you gone, Harvey Korman?  As if it wasn't bad enough to lose Sydney Pollack, Earle Hagen and Dick Martin in the last few days, now we've lost Harvey Korman.  I always loved his characterizations of prim, wired-a-bit-too-tight, diabolical types, such as the one and only Hedley Lamarr from Blazing Saddles.  And since The Carol Burnett Show was required weekly viewing in our household when I was a kid (and I can thank my parents for having excellent taste in viewing and in comedy), there was no shortage of occasions when I got to see Harvey Korman and Tim Conway play off one another. 

Zack Norman is Sammy in "Chief Zabu"

Yesterday's field trip went well.  Parents are all happy and stuff with the new Windows box.  It's been a long time since my mother had anything to do with a computer, let alone something with an OS as recent as Windows XP, so there will be a learning curve.  I've encouraged her to play around with the computer a bit and get used to how to use it, because 95% of what I know about computers was learned by accident.  She doesn't yet have an Interweb connection, so the risk is minimized at the moment.  By the time she does, she should know what she's doing, and those in the family who are accustomed to the Interpipes should be able to guide her well.

I had lunch with the parents yesterday, and that was a bit unexpected, but it was a good time.  We talk once a week on the phone, but the conversation never really gets deep because I'm not a telephone person.  Around the table, though, it's different, and in a way I wished I didn't have to get back to the house.  A meal is always better somehow when it's made by your mom in the house where you grew up.

:: The Great MPG Sweepstakes  Yesterday also gave me another opportunity to try out some additional conservation techniques, and all the way over and back I drove a bit below the speed limit (still fast enough to be safe and not be a rolling chicane, mind you), kept the air off as much as I could stand it, and managed the car's energy as best I could.  This morning I filled up, did the math, and found I'd achieved 35.3 miles per gallon.  It's become almost a challenge to myself to see how far I can safely push my fuel economy, and I'm enjoying it.  In a way, it's like when you lose weight and you try to see how efficiently you can get your body to work while cutting down what you eat to the essentials.

It's not like anything I'm doing is brain surgery, either.  It's changing your behavior behind the wheel (and in some ways, the hardest part of that is putting up with the speed demons who would rather tailgate you  and flip you off than pass you).  It's also about listening to your car and keeping it in good shape.  Even  some of those are very easy things: for instance, get a tire gauge and learn how to use it, and know your car's recommended tire pressures.  I checked my tires this morning and found they were seriously underinflated.  That took all of four minutes to fix, and if you look around you can still find at least one gas station that offers free air (may take some looking, but you can find them).  Four minutes to make your car safer and more efficient.  Mario Andretti's right: Check your tires.

I'm leaving tomorrow on an few days' trip, and that will involve a lot of driving on interstate highways, and I'll be interested to see how Baby fares on a long road trip.  Before the trip, though, I'll give her a good washing, and she's also due a coat of wax, so, weather permitting, that'll be my afternoon.  The coat of wax probably won't make any real difference, but it'll be a psychological boost for me.  Plus, the car will look better, and that's worth something.

:: I mentioned that trip.  Originally, it was going to be two days, but yesterday I got a call that prompted me to book for Sunday and Monday nights, too.  It's for a good reason, though.  I'll share more as events unfold (she wrote, laughing diabolically)....

Pole Position Loans: Prepare to qualify!

A quick post today.  I'm off in a little bit to spend the day installing new Windows box at the parents' home.  Then Friday, I'm off again on some business.  As usual, right when I'm making significant progress at the upstairs workbench, other things beckon.  Go figure!

:: A few weeks ago, This American Life (the radio series, not the television version) presented an excellent documentary about the mortgage crisis, and how we got there.  It's fascinating. You can listen to it here. 

:: Earle Hagen, a prolific film and television composer whose most famous work is the whistled theme from The Andy Griffith Show, and also co-wrote "Harlem Nocturne," has died.  If you recall a piece of music from a vintage television series, chances are he had something to do with it. 

The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate strikes again

We had a quiet, but enjoyable, Memorial Day weekend.  We got away for a bit on Saturday, and then spent Sunday and Monday watching motorsports.  Sunday brought us Monaco, Indianapolis and Charlotte, and then yesterday brought the broadcast of Lime Rock, and I was pleased with the results.  That's especially true in the case of Indy.  I've been partial to Scott Dixon for quite a while, and Sunday was his day. 

I wish I could say the weekend went without heartbreak, but it didn't.  Adrian Sutil, Tony Stewart and Sarah Fisher were all running well when things happened.  Sutil was about to post Force India's first points finish when Kimi Raikkonen got into him in the closing laps.  Tony Stewart had the World 598 wrapped up when his tire let go with two laps to go.  And Sarah Fisher's accident at Indianapolis broke my heart, especially after everything she's been through.  Her post-accident interview on ABC is the closest I've come to breaking into tears watching anything motorsports-related on television.

:: Passings  Dick Martin has died.  I remember when I was young stumbling across half-hour reruns of Laugh-In on one of our local low-power independent UHF stations, and how quickly I became transfixed by the weird, rapid-fire humor of that relic of a series.  I was too young to have seen it air, but it was a hilarious time capsule, anchored by these two guys in suits.  Dan Rowan, the smiling straight man, the anchor of sanity, had to contend with the goofball antics of Dick Martin, and I was hooked.  There's no telling how many Dick Martin lines I stole (or still steal, for that matter). 

Then before bed last night, I learned Sydney Pollack passed away.  Accomplished director, producer and sometime actor, and also an accomplished pilot who flew his own private jets.  If you ever watch the magnificent documentary One Six Right, you'll see Pollack talking about what flying meant to him. 

A Memorial Day prayer

From Norman Corwin's "On a Note of Triumph":

Lord God of trajectory and blast
Whose terrible sword has laid open the serpent
So it withers in the sun for the just to see,
Sheathe now the swift avenging blade with the names of nations writ on it,
And assist in the preparation of the ploughshare.

Lord God of fresh bread and tranquil mornings,
Who walks in the circuit of heaven among the worthy,
Deliver notice to the fallen young men
That tokens of orange juice and a whole egg appear now before the hungry children;
That night again falls cooling on the earth as quietly as when it leaves your hand;
That Freedom has withstood the tyrant like a Malta in a hostile sea,
And that the soul of man is surely a Sevastopol which goes down hard and leaps from ruin quickly.

Lord God of the topcoat and the living wage
Who has furred the fox against the time of winter
And stored provender of bees in summer's brightest places,
Do bring sweet influences to bear upon the assembly line:
Accept the smoke of the milltown among the accredited clouds of the sky:
Fend from the wind with a house and hedge, him whom you made in your image,
And permit him to pick of the tree and the flock
That he may eat today without fear of tomorrow
And clothe himself with dignity in December.

Lord God of test-tube and blueprint
Who jointed molecules of dust and shook them till their name was Adam,
Who taught worms and stars how they could live together,
Appear now among the parliaments of conquerors and give instruction to their schemes:
Measure out new liberties so none shall suffer for his father's color or the credo of his choice:
Post proofs that brotherhood is not so wild a dream as those who profit by postponing it pretend:
Sit at the treaty table and convoy the hopes of the little peoples through expected straits,
And press into the final seal a sign that peace will come for longer than posterities can see ahead,
That man unto his fellow man shall be a friend forever.

(Thanks to Transom.org for the text.)

When you opened the window, the gasoline ran out

I guess this means my creative drought is over:

There's several projects going, and thus far (knock wood) I haven't given up on any of them.  I need some supplies, which we'll get while out this weekend, but in the meantime I'm improvising, adapting and overcoming.  (Thanks, Gunny Highway.)  And at least one reader of this collection of online rants and rambles should recognize one project as being of particular interest....

:: Today was the first time in a couple days I've driven anywhere.  Fuel prices are going ever higher, and I'm not wanting to spend more money than I have to or consume more than I need.  The result, oddly enough, was a couple of days in which I've enjoyed the peace and quiet.  I've gotten things done, and found that while driving into town is nice, in some ways it can't match an afternoon in the workshop, listening to some Joe Satriani on the iPod and getting something built.   (That's something I'll be doing again in a bit, after lunch, though with one ear open to listen for UPS, which should be by today with new Windows box for the parental units.)

Today, though, I needed to go into town, check our post office box and make sure things were okay at the office.  I noticed my fuel gauge was a little lower than I remembered, so I went ahead and topped off the tank while in town.  That caused some angst, since the prices are shooting up, but I gritted my teeth and hoped for the best.  It turned out not to be as bad as I thought. 

The real surprise came, though, when I did the math and figured out my mileage.  To set this up, I drive a car that averages 28-29 miles per gallon.  The car is eight years old, back when gas ran about a buck and a half per gallon where we then lived.  At the time, I had about a 60-mile round trip to work each day, and something in the back of my head told me that gas wasn't going to get any cheaper.  Since I wasn't making very much at the time, it also made sense to save on fuel.  My car's been pretty consistent, as have my driving habits.  It was built with the smaller of the two available engines, so that helps.  It doesn't have a manual transmission, but I try to compensate by accelerating as smoothly as I can, watching the tachometer and listening to the drivetrain, and generally driving with my head.  I drive the speed limit, too -- it makes me unpopular, but that's the breaks.   I also use the cruise control, and try to coast to stops as best I can.  (Several years of that kind of energy management, and having an intuition for how much energy you need to keep going or come to a stop, helped me in flying the airplane on approaches, oddly enough.)  I also keep the car properly tuned and don't haul more stuff around in it than I need.

Lately, though, I've added some things.  As much as the weather's permitted, I've turned off the air conditioner and just run the fan in the closed cabin, which I can usually get away with until later in the afternoon.  I'm also driving a few miles an hour slower, usually about five under.  The net result?  When I did my mileage this morning, my car got 34.2 miles per gallon this last time around.  I had to run those numbers a couple times before I could really grasp it, but there it was.  I'd picked up about six miles per gallon compared to the last period.  Not bad. 

Granted, it's only a temporary fix, and I'm keeping my eye on the technologies that are down the road.  The next car I buy will be a hybrid of some sort, and I'm doing some careful window-shopping against the day I'm ready for a new car.  There are some technologies that are being refined, some others that appear promising.  When the time comes, I'll want something economical, reliable, affordable and that's car enough for me to travel comfortably in, a car with enough power to get it done but not so much that it's wasteful, a car that's worth having and not just something that's an impulsive decision.

Still, man, for now, 34.2 miles per gallon ain't nothin' to sneeze at.

:: Fifty-two Fridays ago today, I logged my very first time.  It was in the left seat of a Cessna 172 out of Palmer, Alaska.  I remember that weird combination of utter fear, complete exhilaration and absolute joy as if it were yesterday.  It was one of the greatest days of my life.  Even when life gives me a real lemon of a day, even when it seems nothing can go right, that is one of those memories I take out to remind me how lucky I am in this life.

Fear and loathing of fear and loathing

After yesterday's bleat, I went upstairs and yanked the Mustang GT kit from the stash, and decided just to have fun with it.  It's coming along well.  Then hubby came home with another kit for me, a Revell Peterbilt 359, which he told me was "a blank piece of paper" for me.  His only instruction to me was to build it, and, like the Mustang, I'm just going to have fun with it.

The good thing is, I think some of the dust is getting knocked off my desire to do things, and I'm actually thinking about (yikes!) getting the airbrush back out and overcoming my dread of it to work on more advanced projects.  (Actually, using the airbrush is fine; it's just all the thinning paint and cleaning the airbrush and all that other stuff that gets to be a buzzkill.  But that can be overcome.)  If nothing goes awry, I plan to spend today at home too, so that will give me some time to get more things done, and maybe I can get some things done today I haven't in a while.   That would be nice.

:: Interesting article in the New York Times Magazine this past week about the revival of dead and dormant brands.  (Caution: login may be required.)  I'd forgotten that Brim coffee, Salon Selectives and Eagle Snacks had gone dormant, but learning how these brands have been revived is interesting stuff.

The terror in a blank piece of paper

I'm planning to spend the day at home today.  There are several reasons: I've not had a day at home for myself in a while (something's always come up), I had to go back to the office yesterday (hence the YouTube post, which I really can't do from home), I'm also trying to do something to economize given that the price of oil is shooting through the roof, and I'm also trying to help the environment a bit.  Granted, staying at home is a teardrop in a salty sea, but it's at least something.

It's also my hope to spend the day doing something fun for me.  Upstairs, I don't even want to think about how many model kits I've amassed over the last couple decades, and I'm hoping to build one of the easier ones today.  The problem is this strange anxiety I get.  I told hubby a couple nights ago that one of the most terrifying things to me in this world is a blank piece of paper.  Why?  Because, while there are so many possibilities for me to create with it, foremost in my mind is how easily I could ruin it, and it's easier to just sit there and stew in my own anxiety.  If it were something mechanical, like rebuilding some kind of electrical component, where there's a certain way you do it, I'd be okay.  Or even editing videotape in one of our edit bays is easy enough; if you screw up, it's very easy to undo it and recut it as much as you need.  But the moment you let me get creative, and I start thinking about the permanence of a given creative act, I get shaky. 

What do I trace it to?  I don't think either of us has really been on any kind of a building tear since we had to move just about four years ago.  When we first moved to the area we're in, we rented a three-bedroom house.  One room was our room, one room was for storage, and one room was a combination workshop and home office.  We had a workbench set up, all the tools in a good location, the airbrush and compressor had a place to live, and it was nice.  It was roomy enough for us to do what we needed, and it was also easy to keep in order.  When we got the cat, we were able to keep the room tidy enough for the cat to find a safe place to stay in the room with us.

In 2004 we got kicked out of that house when the owner, who was going through a divorce, wanted to move away and wanted to sell the house, and we didn't want to buy it.  So we ended up in a rented home that only had two bedrooms.  One room had to double as storage and workshop, and it got cramped in a big hurry.  It was also "not safe for tigers," either, so we had to keep the door shut, and the cat would sit at the door and cry for either of us who was in there. 

Now, we've been in our new house for coming up on two years (and, incidentally, few things can beat the feeling that comes from living in a house that is your own -- one where you don't have to worry about landlords wanting to drop in on short notice; one where when something breaks, you can handle it yourself instead of having to call someone else and wait on them to see after it; one where, instead of making someone else rich, you come closer to owning it outright with each monthly payment).  When we picked out the plans, we were happy that we'd have a dedicated workshop.  The problem is, it's unfinished, and it doubles as storage and workshop.  Neither of us has really had time to really unpack up there.  A lot of our tools and such are still in storage.  There's no finish flooring up there, just the bare floor panels.  And we have so much stuff, it's cramped.  (My typewriter collection hasn't helped things, either, as I have a couple of Selectrics up there in various stages of disrepair.)  Plus, you can imagine that any room in that condition isn't safe for tigers yet, either, and our little one sits at the door and cries for me while I'm upstairs.  (Our cat is so much of a mama's boy.  In fact, he's been sitting next to me and kneading my tummy with his little paws as I've been writing much of this.)

When your building rate goes down over a period of time, it's easy to get out of your groove, and mine definitely has not been the same since our move in 2004.  The only stuff I've been able to get finished has been the odd gift or commission build, with a couple of personal projects I completed in a few days because I was able to spray-can them.  And as your build rate goes down, so does your confidence in your own skills.  It also doesn't help when you have a bunch of kits set aside for Very Special Projects -- for instance, the Twin Otter you have set aside to build the one you flew on in Alaska, the Cessna 152 and 172 kits you have set aside as the airplanes you took flight instruction in, the rare-as-hen's-teeth Aurora DC-9 you want to superdetail once you figure out which airline's livery you want to put on it.  They're all projects that have some kind of something extra to them, and you don't want to screw them up, which means that the farther away you are from your confidence, the longer those projects go unrealized.

Ah, well.  I'll get back upstairs today and figure something out, though, and maybe I'll do something to bust out of my funk.  I do have that Fujimi Porsche Cayman up there, and it looks like a simple enough build.  Or there's that Revellogram Mustang GT I bought as a "why not" project....

Because Juan Pablo Montoya is not for sale

These commercials absolutely slay me every time I see them.  I don't know why, but they do:

Return from Blerghistan

Since yesterday, some things have gotten better.  I got in touch with the client I mentioned, who's willing to work with me to salvage what we can of the project.  That's a load off my mind, and has also helped me get rid of the subterranean nausea in my gut and spirit.  I'm hoping it won't take much to get this project closed out.

I'd like to hope I'm front-loading the week's angst.  This morning I got my credit reports (via annualcreditreport.com, which is the gimmick-free way to get the credit reports to which you're entitled each year -- not that one with the fancy commercials, which actually tries to get you to do something that costs money).  I do this each year to make sure nobody's doing anything fishy with my credit; it's just a good practice to head off trouble.   This year, though, it's particularly important, as I'm trying to get some future planning done and also get the corner turned on paying my debt off.  I'm wanting to make sure I have as little to worry about as I can so I can enjoy life.

Still, even though I know how responsible I am, I must have died a thousand deaths as I waited for each credit report to load, like there was some sort of unspeakable doom waiting on the other side.  Funny, you could give me lab results that say something's wrong with my body, and I wouldn't flinch that much (I've been there before, with diagnoses that are pretty dire, and I was pretty matter-of-fact about it).  But give me something with discomforting or inaccurate information about things that are more behavioral in nature, and I go bananas.  It's almost like I go through life expecting a thunderbolt to strike me down.

:: While I was out this morning, FedEx came and went, and waiting on me back at the house was a very heavy box.  Inside was about 40 pounds of IBM Electromatic 01 typewriter.  Holy cow, is this thing a beast.  But it's part of where the story began.  Pictures to come one day before too long.

At the other end of the technology spectrum, the computer system I ordered for my parents is on its way, and far ahead of schedule.  Monitor arrived yesterday, and the system itself shipped today, I'm told.  I think the folks are gonna be happy, and if I wasn't such a Mac diehard, I'd probably build a similar system for us here.